Customer Reviews

King's Knight

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Before Final Fantasy came out, Square was just one of dozens of companies making games for the NES. Rad Racer was good, but King's Knight was just plain boring. It's a top-down shooter with a heavy fantasy theme to it. About the only interesting thing about this game was that you could see some elements that Square would use later on. For example, there's an option of rearranging the lineup of your characters. That technique will be used in MANY Square games, but mostly the Final Fantasy series. Secondly, notice how different this top-down shooter is: You start playing as one character, fighting your way through one locale. If you die or make it to the end, then you go on to the next character (there's 2 more of them). After all characters have gone through their respective levels, they team up for the first time in some evil-looking place. This concept of characters starting off by themselves and then teaming up later will be used in such games like Secret of Mana 2. When I first heard about this earlier Square game, I was eager to play it. Now that I've played it, I realize this game is nothing to get excited over. For one, the screen scrolls vertically, meaning that you have to blast those mountains, barriers, and bad guys, before they crush you against the end of the screen. Secondly, there is no save or password feature, which is common for an NES game, but unforgivable. The different characters starting in different locales is interesting, like I said, but the levels are LONG and HARD. A pretty bad effort by Square, considering that they did make one of the popular Rad Racer games. With King's Knight, it's no wonder that Square switched to turned-based RPG's . . . .

Its been a while since I've played Kings Knight, but I remember enough to warn you away from it.
As a shooter, this game is horrendous. Played in a top down perspective, the screen scrolls toward the bottom as usual, however along with on-screen enemies you also have to worry about terrain features that occupy most of the screen. If you aren't constantly moving your character left to right (while pressing the fire button as fast as possible) your avatar will be stuck cutting lone furrows through the grid. As soon as this happens, chances are that you will soon be dead.
Hit up YouTube for some great examples of the gameplay. Notice how easily the characters die, and how ineffectual the un-upgraded weapon is.